08/14/2013

Forget
the lazy days of summer. The cadre serving
under the banner of Organizing for America have declared this month “Action
August,” and the marching orders were issued for the Little Obamanists to stage
rallies and blizzard their neighborhoods with flyers and postcards about Global
Warming.

Think
of it as Midnight Basketball for geeks.

In
case you missed it, after what is still slated to have been his last election
to the White House, President Barack Obama changed the name of his political
wing from Obama for America to Organizing for America.

The
move keeps the databases of polls and voting patterns,
email addresses and contributors actively
engaged in the president’s agenda. It also keeps thousands of nerds, who are
not bright enough to score jobs with
Facebook or Google off the streets.

Key
to Action August is the effort to shame members of Congress who oppose the
president’s environmental agenda, but also to stick them with the label:
“Climate Denier.”

When
someone asked to see the president’s birth certificate, they were called
“Birthers,” and it was kind of funny—like the way you would talk about UFOs or
meeting Elvis at a rest stop.

Calling
anyone who questions the how’s and why’s of the earth’s fever a denier
immediately associates someone with the more common phrase: “Holocaust Denier.”
This is not an accident. The liberals are not interested in debate. They are
interested in marginalizing any critics and getting their way.

Obama
himself said he wants to engage in a conversation about ways to improve the
environment, but he will not deal with anyone from the “Flat Earth Society.”
Who are they? They are anyone who disagrees with the president.

The
OFA is now ordering its followers to call out and harass disagreeing
politicians on its enemies list. They are told to flyer neighborhoods, disrupt
town meetings and cyberstalk as part of Action August’s push for the
president’s job-killing environmental agenda.

The
targets of the OFA cadre this August are the 101 congressmen and 24 senators,
who have dared to ask questions about the earth’s fever. Included among the
congressmen is Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R.-Wis.), Rep. Stephen E. Stockman (R.-Texas)
and Rep. Stephen J. Scalise (R.-La.).

After
checking the list three or four times, I am certain Speaker John A. Boehner
(R.-Ohio) is not on the list, which puts him with the president, again.

There
is no point looking for the GOP Whip Rep. Kevin O. McCarthy (R.-Calif.) at all.
McCarthy pals around with Tesla mogul Elon Musk and takes big checks from solar panel ranch companies. The good news is that
having McCarthy does not help anyone win a vote in the
House.

The
OFA cleared two of the Three Amigos, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R.-S.C.) and Sen.
John S. McCain III (R.-Ariz.) as environmentally correct, but their third wheel Sen. Kelly A. Ayotte (R.-N.H.) makes the
enemy list. Her offending quote is: “There is scientific evidence that
demonstrates there is some impact from human activities. However I don’t think
the evidence is conclusive.”

Yikes.
That is what it takes to be called a Climate Denier?

This
standard does not seem to be welcoming of discussion.

When
Congress and Obama return to Washington in September, we will see if the OFA
coercion worked or not. It has been more than four years since Paul Krugman
wrote in The New York Times about the
economy’s green shoots of recovery and glimmers of hope.

As
more and more Americans are asking about when their own recovery takes place.

The
crazy part is that, while the Democrats say they want action on jobs and the
economy, all we really need is for the government to get out of the way. If the
Keystone XL pipeline was started on time, it would be nearing completion now
and 20,000 construction workers would have had two years’ worth of paychecks already. If the EPA and Interior
Department ceased fire on their war on coal, whatever is left of our industrial
base would be enjoying the cheap power that is the envy of competitors.

If
wind, solar and batteries are the way, let them prove it the way Henry Ford
beat out the wood-burning Stanley Steamer cars more than 100 years ago.

Well,
that will just have to wait at least until after Action August passes to the
vault where they keep Summers of Recovery.

In
the meantime, let us hope that the OFA cadre and its enemies list are not the
new normal for political discourse.

08/07/2013

Back
three years, the harbinger that the Tea Party would revive the moribund
Republican Party was the sight of Democratic incumbents overwhelmed and
helpless in chaotic town meetings held during the August recess.

Then,
Tea Party activists, motivated to repeal President Barack Obama’s Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act and
reverse the president’s program to increase
federal spending, taxes and regulation,
flooded the zone to confront Democrats, who supported Obama.

This
summer, as Capitol Hill Republicans step up to support the president’s amnesty
for illegal aliens and protect his health care
regime, they will spend the summer recess playing dodge ball.

Town
meetings? Not so much. Besides, with the amnesty vote pushed off until
September and more meaningless health care repeals passed, the activists are
not supposed to be angry, yet.

What
this game of dodge ball needs is a new referee.

Freedom
Works, the Washington-based hub and spokes for the Tea Party movement, is
calling out the Capitol Hill Republicans with an online action center: Demand a Townhall.

The
website is chock full of town meeting schedules, talking points and an
activist’s tool box to confront members of Congress.

The
site will also include a running list of the
congressmen and senators supporting the bill sponsored by Sen. Michael S. Lee
(R.-Utah) and Rep. Mark R. Meadows (R.-N.C.) that would defund Obamacare in the
Fiscal Year 2014 federal budget, given that the president has decided to delay
its implementation until FY 2015.

Lee
has created the Twitter hashtag #DontFundIt to build support for the bill.

Obamacare
is not ready for action, so there is no reason to pay for a hollow year, he
said. With 10 other senators, Lee sent a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid
(D.-Nev.), saying they would not support funding the health care law in any
way.

Freedom
Works President Matt Kibbe said Tea Party activists need to put the touch on
the prodigal congressmen and senators.

“Most
members of Congress have stopped engaging constituents and defending their
policy initiatives. That’s the real outrage here- the inside-the-beltway
resistance to a participatory process where people have a voice,” he said.

“Our
action center removes the barriers to this information, by identifying who is
already having townhalls, letting activists know where they are, and then
calling out the members of Congress who aren’t and demanding one,” he said.

Activists
joining the Freedom Works protest need to ask two questions: 1. Are you having
a townhall? and 2. Do you support the Lee-Meadows letter to defund ObamaCare
through the upcoming continuing resolution?

Kibbe
said Tea Party activists should deliver this message: “You can go on recess,
but you can’t hide.”

Put
the Republicans on the spot and if they are turning their back on the repeal of
Obamacare force them to explain why, he said.

In
the three years since the Tea Party gave the Republicans 63 new House seats, more senators, the GOP has raised
taxes, jacked up spending and meekly accepted the rogue Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the thousands of
new regulations.

But,
what about health care? That was the big prize the GOP was going to bag.

What
did they do? Well, two things come to mind. First, they fully funded all programs associated with the PPACA, included the
hundreds of millions of dollars handed to Democratic public
relations firms to promote their party’s centerpiece legislation.

Second,
they nominated W. Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts pushed through
a proto-Obamacare program and announced on “Meet the Press” that he loved parts
of Obamacare that he will save.

After
the 2012 elections, Speaker John A. Boehner (R.-Ohio) announced that Obamacare
was settled law—a betrayal of not only his ignorance of the legislative
process, but also of the millions of Americans counting on him to lead the
fight.

Instead
of leading the fight to defund Obamacare, Boehner offered up, what? 40
meaningless votes to repeal the law?

Conservatives
taken in by Boehner’s stagecraft on Obamacare are waking up to the fact that if
you fund it, it will come.

Lee-Meadows
is the legislative way to end Obama’s health care regime and the Freedom Works
Demand a Townhall program is how we keep the Capitol Hill Republicans from
turning tail.

07/31/2013

It
seems like a break in tradition that the mainstream media will not be whooping
it up to celebrate the anniversary of the final days of Watergate and the House Judiciary Committee’s approved and sent
to the whole House three articles of
impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon.

It
is one of the most dramatic political reversals in American history, 29 years
ago this summer Watergate drove Nixon from the White House he was reelected to
less than two years before, winning 49 of 50 states.

The
president resigned Aug. 9, 1974, after he no longer had the support in the
Senate to fend off an impeachment, which was the indictment with the actual
trial conducted in the upper chamber.

The
reason the mainstream media is dialing back an episode that confirmed its place
as the fourth estate and an organic player in governing is that the charges the
Democrats lodged against Nixon are too damn close to how President Barack Obama
and his White House does business.

The
first article of impeachment dealt with how Nixon responded the June 17, 1972
break-in to the offices of the Democratic National Committee housed at the
Watergate Hotel complex.

There
was no evidence ever presented that Nixon knew anything about the burglary, so
the Democrats charged the president with using his office to personally—and
through his staff- delay, impede and obstruct the investigation into the
break-in.

In
subsections of Article 1, Nixon and his staff were accused of giving false or
misleading statements in congressional and judicial testimony and to
investigators, leaking information from Justice Department investigations to
help others adjust their stories or cover their tracks and rewarding witnesses
for false or silent testimony.

The
first article was approved by the committee July 27, 1974, with six Republicans
joining all 21 Democrats for a 27 to 11 tally. Procedurally, the Democrats only
needed one article to move forward and when he learned it passed, Speaker
Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., (D-Mass.) predicted the House would impeach Nixon
by 50 votes.

Two
days later, the Judiciary Committee, led by Rep. Jack B. Brooks (D.-Texas)
passed two more articles.

In
Article 2, the Democrats accused Nixon of accessing private tax records from the IRS and directing the IRS to
audit, investigate and otherwise harass political opponents.

What?
Really?

The
second article also accused Nixon of using the electronic
surveillance and the resources of the FBI to spy on Americans without national
security or law enforcement justification.

The
third article dealt with Nixon’s claims of executive privilege. On four
occasions, the Nixon White House failed to comply with subpoenas from the
Judiciary Committee.

This
quote from Article 3 could have been written this morning:

“In refusing to
produce these papers and things Richard M. Nixon, substituting his judgment as
to what materials were necessary for the inquiry, interposed the powers of the
Presidency against the lawful subpoenas of the House
of Representatives, thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments
necessary to the exercise of the sole power
of impeachment vested by the Constitution in the House of Representatives.”

President
Barack Obama’s press secretary James “Jay” Carney insists the White House has
complied with all legitimate inquires included in subpoenas issued by the
House. Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr., has made the exact same case in his testimony before House
committees.

But,
this is really the same thing as Nixon deciding what information he gave up and
what he did not.

It
has been two months since Obama’s promise to fully investigate the IRS’s
predatory handling of Tea Party groups, 10 months from the Sept. 11, 2012
attacks on Benghazi and two-and-half years since Border Patrol Agent Brian A.
Terry was cut down by an AK-47 waived through to a straw purchaser for a
Mexican crime gang by the ATF’s Fast and Furious team.

Does
anyone believe the White House is forthright in coming clean?

The
Republican leadership on Capitol Hill was brainwashed in a bunker somewhere in
West Virginia to believe any confrontation with a Democratic president, let
alone an impeachment, would be unpopular with the American people.

Unfortunately,
that paradigm will never be tested.

But,
what we do see is that the liberals running
the mainstream media recognize enough similarities between the behavior of the
Obama White House and what Democrats claimed in 1974 was so egregious that
Nixon had to be removed from office.

06/23/2013

Naomi Beth Seligman, the left-wing PR specialist, who helped CIA clerk Valerie Plame deceive the nation, is at it again, and this time she is going after gun makers and video game producers.

Seligman was hired by Plame to spin to the media that the Bush administration leaked her name and endangered her life because she was against the war in Iraq. A self-centered and twisted fantasy as the facts finally bared out.

Anti-gun rights paymaster, New York CityMayor Michael R. Bloomberg, through one of his front groups: Moms Demand Action (for Gun Sense in America), hired the Bay State-raised resident of Santa Monica, Calif., to pressure video games to stop using realistic guns.

Don’t laugh, there is actually movement in that direction.

In May, video game giant Electronic Arts, maker of “Madden NFL” and the “Medal of Honor” series announced that in the future it would not pay licensing fees to gun manufacturers whose guns they used in their video games. Whoa! Big news, right? Well, kinda. Turns out the company had never paid royalties in the past either.

The one thing it had done was partner with the makers of guns used in the games to donate money to veteran-related charity. Well, that program was shut down.

The only money that changed hands was from MacMillan, maker of the .50 caliber sniper rifle, and Magpul, maker of the high-end extended magazines, was from the gun makers to veterans.

To Seligman, who also works for the Bloomberg-led Mayors Against Illegal Guns, EA’s decision is progress. Remember, veteran lost out and everything goes on as before.

With Seligman at the helm, Moms Demand Action released a report June 18 “Game Over: Resetting the Relationship Between Video Game and Gun Manufacturers was produced by Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and Gun Truth Project.” The report is 16-page mishmash of pseudo-social science all suggesting that playing video games with realistic guns leads to the video game player becoming a spree shooter.

In one passage the report reads: “Adam Lanza was also reportedly an avid player of that game, which features a number of rifles made by Bushmaster. Lanza later used a Bushmaster .233 caliber to kill 26 people, including 20 elementary school children, in Newtown, Connecticut.”

Did you follow the bouncing ball? Lanza played a game that used rifles made by Bushmaster, Lanza used a Bushmaster rifle—but, not one used in the game—to kill 26 people, including 20 children.

How is that for proof?

Another passage that refers to the spree shootings in Norway and Newtown: “To be clear, violent video games were not the cause of either of these tragedies. But one can certainly see the link between the promotion of actual, real life weapons in video games and the way in which the shootings were carried out.” Right?

One can also certainly see that if someone, anyone at those shooting tragedies had been armed themselves the situation could have been stopped all together.

Another passage in the report reads: “For the sake of public safety, and the safety of their customers, the makers of these games should not enter into deals that connect fantasy to reality, promote the gun industry and spark ideas in the heads of individuals inclined to mass violence.”

This is just more nonsense. There no public safety connection between licensing deals, let alone sparks that lead to mass violence.

One of the things lost in the current debate over gun rights is that there must be a higher threshold for tampering with a right guaranteed in the Constitution. There is a process for changing the Constitution, but it is through amendments, not through the bullying of companies by left-wing media pranksters.

Sure, maybe the “Founding Founders” were silent on video games, but the Left is going after video games in order disrupt the acceptance of firearms in America.

Moms Demand Action and Seligman are trying to do with the phony-baloney report is leverage generate shame and sanction to do what they cannot achieve through the regular democratic process.

06/16/2013

Congress has begun working through the final passage of a comprehensive immigration bill and regardless of what you have heard, the fix is in. There will be a bill and if you took the time to read it, not only would you hate it, you might be the only one to complete the assignment.

Spoiler alert: The leadership will make sure the bill passes, no matter what it says.

Here are some scary numbers:

A study by the Heritage Foundation, authored by Robert Rector and Jason Richwine, estimated that in 2010 the average illegal alien family received $24,721 in government benefits and services, while contributing just over $10,387 in taxes.

Upon amnesty, these aliens will be granted free and open access to some 80 different means-tested welfare programs, including Obamacare, Social Security and Medicare. Not only blowing the budgetary gaskets of these programs, but more importantly for Democrats expanding the payrolls of the middle-class bureaucrats and paper-shufflers.

Rector and Richwine estimate that even if new immigrants are not allowed to feed at the trough for 13 years, because of their limited skill sets, the average alien legalized in the bill will receive nearly $600,000 in government benefits than he will pay in taxes.

It seems like we should check with China first to make sure they are willing to cover the freight, no?

This situation will be further exasperated by the fact that newly documented workers will drive down real wages of regular Americans.

In Congress today, there are two redoubts for conservatives to defend their principles, conservatives in the Senate and the GOP majority in the House.

In the Senate, it is the cadre forming around senators Rand H. Paul (R.-Ky.), Michael S. Lee (R.-Utah) and R. Edward “Ted” Cruz (R.-Texas). Other colleagues fall in and out of their formation depending on the issues and interests at stake, but in the main they are the steadiest, most effective conservative in the upper chamber.

Even when a bill passes the Senate, House Republicans watching these three men pick up where they left off making the House a place where bad legislation dies.

What is different this time is that the House GOP leadership has already told Paul, Lee and Cruz they are taking the deal and taking the dive. Some on the House side have gone so far as to say that if conservative in the House or Senate make too much noise, the leadership will attack them as out-of-step troublemakers.

Look for the Senate to pass its version of the bill before the July 4 recess. The House will begin its own proceedings on immigration soon and may have its bill done before the Senate, since there are not nearly the procedurals devices available in the lower chamber to slow down a bill leadership wants to pass.

Remember, dear reader, Republicans are not conservatives. Republicans are politicians and their party is where conservatives are most comfortable right now. Republicans are people who take checks from the Chamber of Commerce, so if American business needs cheap engineers, nannies and lettuce-pickers, guess what Republicans will support?

Another characteristic about Republicans is they crave acceptance. They wander the halls of Capitol Hill asking each other: “What don’t people like us?”

Somebody convinced the GOP leadership that if they support the immigration bill, people will like them, and that settled that. Of course, this is nonsense, but it is such sweet nonsense.

For conservatives, watching Republicans is like watching Lucy hold a football for Charlie Brown.

By Labor Day, the GOP leadership will have helped President Barack Obama turn his summer of scandal and retreat into a triumph with the signing of the immigration bill, and once again the Republicans will be flat on their back as Lucy laughs all the way home.

06/09/2013

It is the resignation that cost Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., his job.

Despite having one of the easiest jobs in America, Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray called it quits May 22—meaning Gov. Deval L. Patrick will not be succeeded by an accident-prone dolt, rather party regular William F. Galvin, the secretary of state, will serve as acting governor until the end of Patrick’s term in January 2015.

Just like Donald H. Rumsfeld could not be fired as Pentagon chief until his deputy Wolfowitz was sent to lead the World Bank and Richard M. Nixon could not be impeached until Spiro T. Agnew was dispatched, Patrick has been chained to his desk in Boston—a victim of his own succession.

Murray was a useful running mate. A supporter of abortion rights, who played up his Irish-Catholic upbringing, Murray was the figurehead mayor of the Bay State’s second city and was in many ways the proto-Biden for Patrick, who grew up in a poor black family with an absent father in Chicago’s South Side before earning scholarships to Milton (Mass.) Academy, Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

When President Barack Obama introduces Patrick to the nation, in a few weeks, it will be a real case of what philosopher Yogi Berra called: “Déjà vu all over again.”

Although the Obama’s 2004 was well-run, it really was during the Patrick’s 2006 campaign that David Axelrod and his sorcerer’s apprentice David Plouffe put the final touches on the methods they would use to put Obama in the White House, such as the use of new media and neurologically-tuned aspirational rhetoric.

Patrick slogan: “Together We Can” was just one tweak away from Obama’s “Yes, We Can.”

Patrick’s MySpace page supplemented his campaign website that was a cutting-edge platform with photos, position papers and videos. The site actively collected email addresses that fed the campaign’s email outreaches.

Rhetorically, the campaign’s biggest coup was Axelrod’s burglary of the word: Hope from the House of Clinton. William J. Clinton was the “Man from Hope, Arkansas,” who “still believed in a place called: Hope,” especially when he awarded students the Hope Scholarships.

In his speech to the state party’s 2006 convention, Patrick used the word 11 times, and in a key passage said: “I’m not asking you to take a chance on me, I am asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations. Take a chance on hope.”

When he ran for president in 2008, Obama used the same line: “I’m not asking you to take a chance on me. I’m also asking you to take a chance on your own aspirations.”

“Hope” was deployed so many times, so many ways by Axelrod during the 2008 Obama campaign, you would have never known it was once another camp’s calling card.

Flummoxed, the former first lady charged Obama with copying Patrick—not her husband—but, friends, it cannot really be plagiarism if the words were written by the same man.

Plagiarism, of course brings us to Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who in his 1988 campaign for president ripped off both Robert F. Kennedy and British Labour Party leader Neil G. Kinnock, which brings us back to Murray.

The price for Murray’s May 22 resignation was a $200,000-a-year job with the Worcester Chamber of Commerce. Nice how things work out?